Hell or High Water

Hell or High Water

Rating 5 out of 10

Watching the trailer for this it looked interesting.  Great cast.  Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster.  Has a bit of the old Western movie feel even though it's modern day.  Then there is the good reviews on www.rottentomatoes.com.  Actually GREAT reviews.  As I have said in the past it makes me nervous when a movie gets positive reviews in the 90+%.  Hell or High Water is sitting at 98% positive reviews.  I always have to wonder about any movie where 149 of 152 goofball movie reviewers gave it a positive review.  That's the case here.  This is not a bad movie.  It's just VERY slow.

Toby and Tanner (Pine and Foster) are brothers. Tanner is the bad sheep that shot their abusive dad so many years ago and spent ten years in prison. Where Toby is the good kid that stayed around to take care if their terminal mother in her last year.  Mom left the family West Texas farm in debt and very close to foreclosure.  The brothers get together and start robbing banks in order to save the family farm.  Sheriff Marcus (Bridges) is three weeks away from retirement and makes finding these brothers his mission in life.

While the movie itself seems to have the budget of a loaded SUV, the acting is quite good.  Jeff Bridges is always fantastic and he is in good form here.  If you like a movie that builds to a slow boil without all the special effects and don't care if the story is on the predictable side you will enjoy this one.  I was mildly entertained.

The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans

Rating 5 out of 10

Not normally a movie I would see on opening weekend but the Hottie wanted to see it and she usually gets her way.  I like both the lead actors- Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander even though I can barely pronounce either.

I would call this the feel bad movie of the summer.  Not a bad movie but barely an uplifting moment in the 132 minutes of screen time.  The movie starts in the 1920s when an English soldier, Tom, is retuning from the war.  Having seen some terrible things some boring and alone time appeals to him so he signs up to be the lighthouse man on an otherwise deserted island.  His job is to live on the island and to manually light the lighthouse every dusk to help the ships find their way into port after dark.

After his first six month stint alone on the island when he comes back to the mainland for a short time he falls for the lovely mayors daughter who also takes a fancy to him.  She is so ready to get out of the small town she convinces Tom to marry her and take her to the island with him.  They get along well in isolation and soon begin to start a family.  Unfortunately they have two failed pregnancies that obviously take a toll on Isabel.  Not long after the second miscarriage a small row boat shows up on shore with a dead man inside and a beautiful baby girl.  Isabel talks the always follow the rules Tom into not reporting the incident and keeping the baby as their own.

Unfortunately when the baby is three when they are back in town on a short vacation they meet the childs real mother and hear the story of the how the baby and father ended up in that small boat.  The rest of the movie is how Tom and Isabel try to cope with what they have done.

My problem is not with the slow pacing.  There is not really any way you could speed up this story.  I was not impressed with the way the director (Derek Cianfrance) decided to film it.  His love of close ups is amazing.  The leads are beautiful people but I don't need to be able to count their nose hairs with the extreme close ups that seemed to make up half the movie.  The story is depressing and slow. I was mildly entertained but could not recommend it to anyone.

Kubo and Two Strings

Kubo and Two Strings

Rating 6 out of 10

I was on the fence with this movie.  It looks interesting yet different.  When I had a chance to take my three year old grandson to the movie I always jump at the chance.  The movie did turn out to be interesting and different.

Kubo starts off in the movie as a baby being protected by his mother after her evil father and sisters killed his father.  He has a talent of playing his guitar looking instrument and making paper fold into different characters as he tells a story.  He uses this talent in the small town to get money to support himself and mom.  His mother always tells Kubo to be back in their cave before dark.  When he strolls too far one day he doesn't make it back before the sun goes down and gets back on the radar of evil grandpa and those crazy aunts.

The base of the movie is Kubo on the run in a journey to get a magic suit of armor that will help him defeat the bad guys.  He has the help of a strict but funny monkey and a large human/beetle.  The animation is much more traditional Japanese animation rather that the Jungle Book type I have been spoiled by.  It wasn't bad, just not really my taste.

Over all I found the movie mildly interesting.  My grandson kept his attention with a little aid of the bag of popcorn in his lap.  There are some battles in the movie, but nothing to scare most kids.  It was worth the early movie price I paid even tho it does gripe me to have to pay adult price for a three year old.

Pete's Dragon

Rating 7 out of 10

I always enjoy taking the grandkids to a "popcorn movie".  They call it a popcorn movie because they know they can get me to buy an tub of popcorn and of course candy and goodies.  I'm the one that comes out a winner.  Especially when the movie is pretty good.  As was the case with Pete's Dragon.

I didn't realize this was a remake from 1977. I kinda remember the original.  This movie starts off with a family on and adventure up through the mountains.  When dad swerves to miss an animal in the road the parents are killed little five year old Pete wanders out in the woods all alone.

Five years later we see Pete is alive and well deep in the forest with a magic dragon named Elliot as his best friend and protector.  He is happy the way life is except a group of loggers cutting down trees close to his Swiss Family Robinson type of tree home.  When a lady forest ranger stumbles upon little Pete and takes him in it causes turmoil with Elliot the dragon.

Locals have heard stories of dragons living in the forest for many years and are excited at the chances of seeing/catching one.  The movie is cast well.  It paces right along.  Never once looked at my watch.  My grandkids enjoyed it.  I enjoyed it.  It's a cute and harmless movie all will have a good time with.

Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad

Rating 6 out of 10

When the fantastic trailer came out for Suicide Squad this became my most anticipated movie of the year.  Don't know that I've ever seen a trailer that made me want to see a movie so much.  Then the terrible reviews came out.  One reviewer called it not the worst movie of the year but close.  This clearly brought my expectations down.  I found this movie to be somewhere between best movie of the year and worst movie of the year.  Good movie.  Not great.

This movie starts after Batman and Superman has their battle.  Superman is no longer with us and the government is looking for someone to protect us when the next bad guy come after us.  Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) works for the government and assembles a crew of the worst of the worst.  Bad guys and gals with special powers.  As bad luck would have it as soon as the squad is assembled one of the ladies with special powers goes rogue and decides to kill everyone on the planet.

The Suicide Squad themselves have lots of promise.  The biggest problem is a movie like this rises and falls with the villain. Here the villain and her gang of weird looking helpers are just goofy.  You never feel like the squad or humanity is in much trouble.

Margot Robbie is great as Harley Quinn.  Will Smith is always good.  Jared Leto is a pretty good Joker.  The movie has some good action scenes.  Some comedy.  I was entertained.  Hoped to be overwhelmed but was just entertained.  I'm hoping Suicide Squad II is much better.

Jason Bourne

Jason Bourne

Rating 6.5 out of 10

Still out of town and some time to kill.  Can't see Suicide Squad until the Hottie rolls into town so Jason Bourne it is.  Went in with very low expectations and by that was pleasantly surprised.  Not a great movie but I was mildly entertained for the 123 minutes I sat in the chair.

I like Matt Damon and the rest of the cast.  Like the rest of the Bourne movies (except the one he wasn't in) for good or bad Matt carries the film.  This one is pretty much like all the rest.  Jason is still getting pieces of his memory back.  Just enough to carry the plot line forward.  The evil CIA boss (Tommy Lee Jones) knows he has the secrets locked up in his brain to bring down his secret op program so he must be taken out.  There is always a sensitive female working in the CIA that decides to slip Bourne top secret information to help him find out why he is the way he is.  This time that agent is Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander).

Lots of action as Bourne takes out one hit man after another in his quest to expose the bad guys.  Lots of scenery as they travel from Greece to Italy to Las Vegas.  I know I have harped not this before but the film style that seems to follow these movies is crazy.  The camera never stops moving.  Even when the characters are standing still the camera floats up and around like the cameraman is drunk.  Fight scenes are zoomed in and out so fast it's hard to tell at times whom is hitting whom.

That said I was mildly entertained.  If you liked the other Bourne films you will like this one too.  Damon is good.  If you want to get out of the summer heat there are worse ways than this movie. Or it will make a decent rental a little later.

Nerve

Nerve

Rating 6 out of 10

I'm in Minnesota for work and had a rain day.  My supervisor Jim and I could go outside and enjoy the 72 degree weather.  Instead we decided to go into a dark movie theater for a couple hours.  We intended to go endure the shaky cam and see Jason Bourne beat up bad guys only to find out when we got to the theater the 445p show was "canceled".  Faced with having to go back outside and breathe fresh air we looked at the board and saw Nerve was scheduled to start at 5p.  Sold.

Clearly Jim and I are not the demographic the studio had in mind when they gave the movie the green light.  We thought we were going to be the only two in the theater until four teenage girls came in during the previews and sat in the back probably creeped out that two grandpa's were in the same theater.  One crazy thing about this Cinemark theater is the movie was scheduled to start at 5p.  Instead between the commercials and previews the opening credits started at 5:28p!!! Twenty eight minutes of previews and commercials.

Oh yeah, the movie.  This movie plays on the social media craze between twitter, you tube and maybe a touch of video games.  A blacklist illegal game has taken the younger crowd by storm where people can play the game where faceless moderators dare the person to do crazy things and broadcast them with their iPhones for money.  Each dare gets a little crazier and pays a little more. Vee (Julia's niece Emma Roberts) is a repressed high school girl who can't even talk to her football stud guy crush is talked into playing the game.  She quickly is paired up with Ian (Dave Franco) and they become fan favorites.  The dares become more and more dangerous.  The game is very illegal yet everyone in NYC seems to be watching and the police have no clue.  Vee see's this is no simple game and becomes determine to shut it down.

The two leads are likable and overall the movie is fairly harmless and mildly entertaining. I would think if you are over the age of about 25 you may want to wait for RedBox or Netflix.